How to dispose Old Hard Disk Drive

[Raveroy]

I am the user of the system from last five years I have collected my old hard drive it is something around 10 to 12. Some of them are not working and some are working. In those hard drives there is very much important information available. I don’t want to dispose those entire important data from my hard drive. And I don't want to just throw them in the dust bin or give the drives for recycle as there is a risk of getting the information leak. So do anyone have the idea how I can dispose my entire hard drive without getting any information leakage. Please suggest me the cheap way to degauss these old Hard Disk Drives to everlastingly destroy the data which is present in them.

[Odalis]

You can use a disk wiping program to format your hard disk drive and substitute the accessible data with the dummy data, which identity the thieves and others will not be able to utilize it. There are numerous disk wiping programs available in the market place, some of them are free. Such as Eraser and Boot & Nuke is two of the most popular disk wiping programs available for wiping the data. These programs are very trouble-free to use. They work by deleting the important information and then writing over it with dummy data so that the removed data cannot be recovered again. And then you can able to throw your hard disk drive anywhere without any problem.

[Florence_USA]

Basically there are three basic methods:

• Clear
• Physical Destruction
• Purge

For hard disk drives they suggest:

1. Overwrite media via agency-approved and validated overwriting technologies/methods/tools.
2. • Disintegrate
   • Shred
   • Pulverize
     Incinerate: incinerate hard disk drives by burning the hard disk drives in a licensed incinerator.
3. • Purge using the Secure Erase. Purge hard disk drives by either purging the hard disk drive.
   • NSA/CSS-approved is involuntary degausses or by disassembling the hdd and purging together with the platters with an NSA/CSS-approved degaussing wand.
   • Purge media by using agency-approved and validated purge technologies/tools.

Degaussing any current generation hard disk will render the drive everlastingly not viable.

[Cruzz]

The way to securely dispose of your entire hard drive is to just remove the entire file from your hard drive before getting purge of your hard drive. It is not only boring as well as time consuming but does not guarantee that you’re all the files are deleted from top to bottom and remaining the information could still remain on the hard drive. So the most excellent way to make sure that anything on the hard drive can never be accessed again physically destroy the hard drive.